A Boy With Her Eyes
by dundee998
Summary: “So, you’re a bizzaro version of the Yondaime?” What secrets had been kept safe in one dimension are coming loose in another, and if Minato wants to find a relationship with his newly-found son, he must piece together the clues that set them apart.
1. Chapter 1

There was a boy eating ramen in the corner of his eye.

For all of a second, he paused to stare; no Ichiraku Ramen, no genin in kill-me eye-bleeding orange, and no dandelion tuft of blonde spiky hair. He shook his head, and continued along his path; the thrice-damned tower was still several blocks away, and war in the shape of broken soldiers and hellish paperwork awaited his attention.

He dreaded the tower. It was an awful place, where unsorted red tape was the cause of half the war's casualties, new information siphoned in daily to be analyzed with last month's reports, and if they were lucky, the combined information could save someone's life.

The trouble with that, of course, is that all of that never ending flow of information had to be absorbed by a single individual to put into perspective-it was meaningless if spread across a committee, where every member could forget a vital piece of information that would make the rest of the puzzle click into place.

He hated this job almost as much as he hated himself, but he knew that if it were anyone else, they would do even a worse job than he.

-----

High in this prison, the tallest room of the building, he sat and forced his brain to put all the facts into useable information.

A ghost of the door was kicked aside, though the physical aspect remained in place, and in stormed the boy with yellow hair mutely berating him, a childish scowl on his admittedly ugly face. The boy had her eyes. Half fury, half mischief, and a spark of life that flickered brightest blue beneath the boy's furrowed brows.

The apparition stomped his way about the office for two long heartbeats, and then fell apart into motes of sun-filled dust that flowed lazily in the morning light.

A less-than-sane grin came twitching over his face. Perhaps now the council would let him retire, on behalf of his going mentally insane.

He spent that night staring at old photographs of a woman with red hair.

-----

They did not impeach him, of course. Foolish of him to think so. Once Danzou's plot had been unearthed and the war hawk banished so many years ago, there had not been a straight spine on the entire collection of fogies.

Instead, they declared that he had been merely overworked and fatigued to the point of hallucinations. To counteract this from happening again, the mob of elders appointed him two personal advisors who would share his workload and keep him sane.

He was not surprised to see Jiraiya on this team; Hizashi, on the other hand, had come out of nowhere.

Truth be told, he was a bit leery of working with the man. The Hyuuga spare had been a very good friend during the few short years Minato had been Hokage before the Kyuubi had struck, and indeed had helped him immensely in designing the Shiki Fuujin during that narrow, terrifying week before it all hit the fan.

However, before Minato could perform the ritual, Hizashi's wife had been killed during the attack, and they had never really spoken after that, barring the nightmarish morning when Hizashi's niece had been kidnapped and Konoha went to war.

Nonetheless, there they were, the two of them having arrived in his office even earlier than he had. Jiraiya had a finger in his ear, and Hizashi was picking his nails, but they both shared identical grins promising something unpleasant.

"It seems, Lord Hokage," started the Hyuuga, an unpleasant smile loaning a sarcastic twist to his otherwise respectable words, "That you've been under an inordinate amount of stress, that of which we design to alleviate."

Jiraiya plucked the questing finger from his ear and threw the accompanying limb over Hizashi's shoulders, a definite leer on his warty features. "That means, 'we're here to keep you from going ape-shit crazy, like it or not', so get ready, boss, we're gonna help you win this thing."

-----

The next time he caught a glance of the phantom youth, he stood on an old, grubby bridge that marked the place as having once been a park. He leaned against the rails on one end, and on the other side, the dandelion boy, a girl with powder pink hair, and a pale, dark-eyed waif waited against an illusionary visage of green trees and clear skies. He blinked once, and saw in their place the normal dead landscape of war-torn Konoha.

The Uchiha clan was very much dead. It had been for a decade. His own student destroyed it two years after the Kyuubi incident, and had not been seen since. After hearing about the coup, the young Hatake murdered the lot of them, down to that little toddler of Mikot,o's; he had taken their treasonous plot as an insult to his long dead friend. On the bridge, the male likeness of Uchiha Mikoto slouched condescendingly as the sun child with her eyes grinned blithely.

-----

"My friend, you need a break," drawled the Mizukage over a petite dish of heated sake. The Hokage responded by flitting his eyes upwards to meet Momochi's, then down again to stare at the breaking reflection of his face in the alcohol; if he squinted, it looked like someone else.

Mizukage Momochi grimaced in sympathy for his fellow Kage's fleeting sanity, and tumbled the liquid over shark like teeth. Sanity was overrated anyway; if the Hokage had been in his full mind a few years back, Momochi never would have succeeded in his crazy plan.

-----

The third time he saw the sun kissed child, the boy was accompanied by a caricature of a nightmare.

Hatake Kakashi, the most famous Konoha nukenin since the deceased Orochimaru, single bearer of the Sharingan, a vigilante known for having murdered without mercy an entire clan, stood gently admonishing the child with a disturbing but reassuring smile in his single visible eye.

-----

Hizashi and Jiraiya grew alarmed at how much the Hokage was drinking. The older of the advisors recalled a woman he once knew, who drank with the same forlorn expression for years after her brother died. He wondered which of the KIA reports from the war had sunk the Hokage to this level.

-----

He had not told anyone that he was still having visions. Konoha did not need a ruler who was going insane.

-----

It had been the longest Chuunin exam in his life. Down on the battlefield, clueless genin fought pathetically for dominance, but superimposed on the reality, young warriors proved themselves against monsters.

The sun kissed boy, the one with her eyes; he had fought first, against a young, angsting clone of Hizashi's. That was the only dream he paid attention to, focusing on the reality for the rest.

It was only towards the end that he became interested in the dream world again, when the Uchiha waif zipped down the wall in a glorious blur of white and blue lightening, and impaled his arm through a spiky egg of sand. The pale boy leapt away almost instantly, and in his wake followed a thick blue veined appendage that reached straight across the arena, and then drew back on itself into the egg. It collapsed in clumps of sand, revealing a white-faced youth clutching at his shoulder.

From his viewing point in the Kage seating box, Minato tried to put together what information he could gather from the mirages, and a thought popped into his head.

"Hizashi, can I ask you a question?"

"Yondaime-sama may ask his humble servant whatever he wants."

"Cut the crap. Does Suna have a jinchuuriki?"

"I believe so; for the Ichibi, if I'm not mistaken. The Kazekage's youngest son."

"Red hair, with control over sand?"

"Er, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, just wondering…"

----------

Compression process beginning...


	2. Chapter 2

Kumo had attacked. Thanks to Konoha's alliance with Kirigakure, they could not come by water, and instead arrived by land, scattered, impoverished, and lost. Outpost ninja caught them early, and were right now keeping them trapped in a lake surrounded by cliffs on the border of Rice Country.

When he arrived, he noted with a dull sort of horror that over the battlefield of warring ninjas, two stood out in particular: first by the fact that they did not acknowledge the existence of anyone else, second, by one's unnatural appendages bursting out of his back, and the other's incorporeal tail of boiling red energy, and third, that the winged one was the Uchiha boy, and that the blonde one, the boy with her eyes, the youth bearing demonic chakra, was his thirteen years dead son.

-----

"Gods DAMN, this is NOT the time to go INSANE!" His head hurt worse than anything else he had ever experienced, even worse than the first time he had tried out Hiraishin, and almost everyone knew what kind of a mind trip THAT had put him through, but even now the pain was receding in favor of a pleasantly fuzzy sensation, like a hangover in reverse.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" That was the purple winged monster who was also somehow the Uchiha child. He could see him? He could see... He could interact!

"You… You're supposed to be dead." He thumped the boy on the head. The Uchiha were all traitors to Konoha, after all. The small amount of Senju blood that ran through his veins cried out in excited glee at the violence towards the blood traitor.

The fox-sheathed boy stared down at the unconscious body of the Uchiha, then looked back up at Minato in horror.

"S-Sasuke-teme… You BASTARD!"

"He was going to hurt you," Minato explained. What a curious experience this was. By now, all traces of Konoha and Kumo nin had vanished. A dozen theories flashed through his addled mind, and he picked up the one that seemed most likely. "In my world, that means I saved you. Is it different here?"

The look on his son's face was quite amusing. "But- I was gonna- I promised- who ARE you?"

Still buzzing pleasantly from the experience of what he now thought of as crossing dimensions, Minato giggled at the thought that even though the entire ninja world knew him at first glance, his own son couldn't recognize him. "…You know, that's the first time someone's asked me that in a long time."

The boy stared at him. "You're not going to answer. Fine. Thanks for knocking Sasuke out, I guess." He began to drag the body.

"Where are you going?"

"Konoha."

"Mind if I tag along?"

"Whatever."

"You look morose."

"My best friend just tried to kill me."

"That's a damper."

-----

They made most of the rest of the trip without speaking, only pausing for the boy to punch his companion back into unconsciousness whenever the Uchiha brat began to wake up again. Kakashi caught up with them a few miles before they reentered Konoha, and arrested Minato on the spot. He wasn't particularly surprised by this, and agreed rather amiably to the rights Kakashi read to him as a prisoner, however few though those rights were in number.

"If you tell us everything we want to know, you will not be deliberately harmed. If at the end of interrogation you are deemed a danger to Konoha, you will be dealt with appropriately." Kakashi then spiced up this amazing deal by glaring at Minato with one dark, hate-filled eye and throwing in an insult to boot. "You filthy imposter."

Minato smiled.

Kakashi punched him in the eye.

They continued their trudging walk back to Konoha.

-----

As a suspected spy to Konoha, Minato had been suitably restrained. Chakra suppressing handcuffs and foot manacles, state-approved clothing of cheap off-white canvas, and a variety of restrainers chaining him against the wall in a manner that would not interrupt blood circulation or cause significant discomfort, but were quite impossible to maneuver around. Had Minato resisted these measures, he would have suffered a great deal more than just restraints, and he would have been quite bored if it had not been for Anko.

Not very many people realized that as fellow students of the Sannin, they would be of the same generation. Even fewer knew that they hated each other passionately. Or at least he thought they did.

After a somewhat embarrassing confrontation, where he acted very childishly and called Anko some unsavory names that resulted in a bright red handprint on his face, she admitted that she wished he had never died. Minato gave her a grin so humorless it felt more like baring his teeth than a reassuring facial expression. "You should be glad your wish didn't come true here-I couldn't even keep you away from Orochimaru."

She left directly after that, no doubt to recover from the shattered hero worship thing, but the woman came straight back the next day. With tales.

"Do you know, he came up with his first original technique when he was twelve? You must be so proud-he calls it his Sexy no jutsu. He uses Henge to turn himself into a naked girl, and tries to make perverts nosebleed."

"Oh, yeah, he's got PLENTY of friends. He spends all night chatting and laughing with them. I've never seen such green leaves before-I guess talking to plants really is good for them."

"Poor little fellow got last place in his class, but he managed to graduate by beating one of his instructors half to death."

Minato bore this verbal torture with a permanent rictus of a smile and occasionally with a short bark of a laugh, but inside he made plans… Oh yes, the first thing he would do when he got out of his place would be to hug his son to death. Then, he would pound the idiot into the ground. When would this examination end?

-----

The majority of the conversations with the faceless interviewers went something like this:

"What is your name and where are you from?"

"My name is Namikaze Minato and I come from a different Konoha. When can I see my son?"

"You are not Namikaze Minato. You are a spy and/or suffering from identity crisis."

And so on, repeated in fifty different ways over the course of the last month. He supposed he should be thankful. If he were in the current Hokage's position, he wouldn't have wasted time on such a troublesome prisoner, instead letting such a person be killed in their cell a few days after their imprisonment. Minato blinked, and would have shook his head if the restraints allowed it. He really should be thankful.

-----

Between Anko's sporadic visits, he was questioned about the other reality and his own childhood, as the rulers of the city attempted to ascertain that Minato was not in fact an enemy spy, and more importantly, that he really was who he said he was. Although one reason why the process took so long WAS his fault, or at least fault could be attributed to him; when a Yamanaka had been brought in to perform one of those mind rape techniques, Minato smiled in greeting.

"Hey, Inoichi, how's it going?"

Yamanaka Inoichi ran away from the Interrogation Compound screaming.

Gods above, but he wished they would stop their questions and just let him meet his son.

It was that thought that kept him sane. When Anko was not regaling him with tidbits of the boy's life she had learned while serving her time in ANBU watching over him, Minato drew back on his sparse memories of when this entire world was still a phantom, and he could glimpse bits and pieces of his son's day-to-day life.

These things, Minato knew: The boy liked ramen.

He had a rivalry with the Uchiha scion.

He used Kage Bunshin extensively, and somehow had not yet been driven insane-probably.

He had the King of the Tailed Demons sealed into his gut.

Much like his mother, he was unhealthily obsessed with that particular shade of kill-me neon orange. And that was it, really.

The kid seemed fairly content without any real father, and the mistakes he was making were perfectly ordinary flaws that would be sorted out with time and maturity. This world really was better off without Minato. Damn that Sarutobi for dying off before his time.

Speaking of which…

"Oy, Anko-chan, where's the old professor? I _know_ the old codger's around here somewhere, I saw him talking with…" His son. Why couldn't he remember the name of his son?

"He's dead."

"What? No, he can't-"

"I don't mean years ago, he died a few months before you popped out of nowhere. Tsunade's the Godaime now. The brat and the ero-sennin brought her back, if you're interested to know."

"E-ero-sennin?"

"A nickname your kid started for your old teacher, and well, it was so appropriate, people just picked up on it."

"How did Sarutobi die, though? In my time, it took the King of the Demons and his own skewed sense of sacrifice to take him down."

There was a cold, frigid silence.

"He died trying to seal away Orochimaru the same way you had sealed the Kyuubi." Anko collapsed on her seat, the weight of her past decisions heavy on her head. "If he were here, it would make clearing your name so much easier…" She left after that, and now the only visitors Minato saw were trying to prove that he either was a spy or mentally deranged. At least, until one night…

---------

Explanation for why mindreading didn't work out edited in.


	3. Chapter 3

There were no windows in his tiny, sterile cell, but a dim golden glow emanated throughout the ceiling most nights. Tonight, however, they had shut down the power to work maintenance on the chakra reactors in the building, and his small room was completely and utterly black. Despite the complete lack of light, Minato was awake and alert as possible for a person imprisoned for two months. This was largely because of the clumsy sounds of someone trying to break in from the other side of the door.

"F--- this, I'm turning on a light." From behind the door, a faint glow of pale blue emitted, and at last the intruder broke through. Minato tried to make out the intruder's features by the light of the chakra flame in the short figure's hand, but it was too dim and small to make out anything but the faint shine of eyes. It was most likely that it was the effect of the blue light, but he could have sworn that they twinkled purest blue. He allowed himself a small ray of hope, and waited.

"Damnit, this ain't Sasuke's cell!"

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" …

What little he could see of the face wrinkled in what he could only assume was a face-splitting grin, and the intruder struck a pose with one hand giving a thumbs up.

"I'm the great and wonderful Uzumaki Naruto, 'ttebayo! I'm gonna be Hokage someday! And, um… Why are you laughing?"

Minato couldn't help himself.

"That's the most ridiculous name I've ever heard! Were you named after the fishcake or the guy in the old pervert's book?"

"Hey, it's a great name! I got a bridge named after me, you know that?"

He didn't know that.

"How did a loser ninja like you get a bridge?"

So Naruto - HIS SON! - told him.

Minato listened to the following story with awe, all the while wishing that these stupid bonds would break and he could give his son, his own super-hyper and miraculously empathetic flesh and blood any kind of contact at all, be it a hug or a punch, _anything_. How could anything he created be so full of life? It brought a painful ache to his heart that he couldn't have witnessed for himself the growth of this amazing young creature.

"... And then Zabuza attacked all the bad guys who were protecting Gatou, but his arms were still torn up from his fight with Kakashi, so he asked for one of my kunai, and caught it in his teeth! It was sooo cool! He killed, like, half of the bad guys with just one knife, and even when they had stuck so many spears and stuff in his back he looked like some demonic hedgehog, he kept on attacking Gatou until the evil little runt was knocked off the bridge! Then he turned around and sort of glared at all the rest of the goons, and they all backed away because he was just that scary-looking, which was totally AWESOME, and I have GOT to learn how to do that. He took a few steps towards us, but he started to stumble, and collapsed on the ground, which was really sad, cause he had been totally badass up till then just to avenge Haku's death. Then it turned out that Sasuke wasn't dead after all, cause Haku was making sure not to hit any parts that could kill 'em, I didn't get all the details, but it sounded pretty awesome."

"So, did you forgive Haku for attacking you and your friend?"

"Sure I did! Wasn't anything to forgive, was there? He was fighting for the person he loved best, and Sasuke recovered real quickly from the attack! Lessee, where was I? Oh yeah, then it looked like the bandits were gonna attack the town because Zabuza had killed their meal ticket, but then the entire town showed up with little Inari leading them with his crossbow, and they scared off all of the bandits at once! It was pretty awesome, for a little twerp like that. We thought Zabuza had died right there, but then Kakashi began pulling out all of the knives the bad guys had stuck in him, and put him next to Haku so he could see his face. The snow started to fall right then, and Zabuza died for real..."

Zabuza… The poor devil. It looked like while Konoha had thrived without his presence, Mizu still suffered tyranny and poverty without Minato to help the Demon overthrow the government. At least the old devil managed to find a hero's death.

"Hey, thanks for listening to me jabber on like that, but I still gotta find Sasuke-teme-I know he's locked up somewhere in this place, and I still need to give him back his forehead protector. Sakura-chan and I worked together to buff the scratch off. Also, I just remembered… are you that guy who helped me knock out Sasuke in that waterfall place?"

Minato blinked. He had forgotten about that, too.

"Yeah. How's the renegade coming along?"

Naruto grinned. "Loads better. Snake-face can't touch him now. Kakashi-sensei says that if he hadn't been, um 'apprehended', we'd never get him back. So, thanks." And then he was gone. In and out like a whirlwind, just like his name.

-----

When the next examiner came in to test his mental health, Minato demanded one thing before the T and I ninja could start.

"Uzumaki Naruto. I want to see him."

-----

Several day-cycles came and went before Minato got a response to his request. Unsurprisingly, Tsunade herself came into that cramped little dungeon, followed closely by Dan's niece-what's her name-Shizune.

"So you're the miscreant with the idea of pretending to be Minato, ah?" He had to hand it to her, the Fifth Hokage carried her title like some sort of solemn and fierce goddess prepared to strike at whatever befell her loyal charges. Amazing how even honey brown can become like steel in the right person's eyes.

He smiled.

"Finally decided to visit me, Tsunade nee-chan?" She still stood stonily, not fazed in the least at this familiar address. "So this is the kind of woman Orochimaru went up against in my world. No wonder he failed so magnificently."

"Prisoner, you are here to affirm your assumed identity of Namikaze Minato by interrogation, not by affecting the deceased man's mannerisms. You _will_-" A young looking, well manicured, and godly strong hand took him by the throat- "respect my status as Hokage. Now, _what do you want with the boy._" A corner of his mouth twitched absently, even as he stood immobile and risking being choked to death by the most powerful woman on the planet.

"I want to meet my son. For real. Not in the darkness, not behind a mistaken identity. I lost him once in my own world-I won't lose him again because of some bureaucratic red tape." The rich brown steel softened somewhat in her eyes, and she relinquished her grip to stand impassively once more.

"Who will tell him the truth?" By that, she meant, 'Which of us will break his trust first?'

"What sort of relationship do you have with him?" he asked, already knowing most of the answer. She looked away-a chink in the armor of the battle goddess.

"He reminds me of Nawaki. He found the faith I'd lost in my grandpa and his brother-stupid kid. You can't help but love 'im." Something seemed to change about the queenly woman, and she looked up again, resolve strengthened. "I'll-"

"I'll do it." Tsunade hesitated, a question on her lips. "Who's to say that I'll be in this dimension forever? In case I fade away, there should be as many people he can trust here as possible." For the first time in this reality, Minato saw the Godaime smile, a sad, secret, and above all thankful curve.

"Thank you. Heh, I must be a fool for believing in you, but I really can't find anymore excuses to keep you locked up anymore. Take note, Shizune; henceforth, this man is Namikaze Minato, though his explanations for being here are still in question." She looked down at him, a questioning air about her. "Exactly how did you say you got here?"

He thought hard for a moment, and then, "I thought I was going insane. I kept on seeing people who had been killed. People I didn't know existed. Faces that should have been etched with misery, and were instead wrinkled with smiles. It all came together in the Valley of the End, though I'm sure you've heard this part before."

Tsunade had this weird, unreadable look on her face. "Go on."

"Well, I saw Naruto fighting the Uchiha boy, and suddenly all the noises of the battle around me got cut off. Now, the boys were the only real ones, and all the soldiers were just ghosts in the background, till they faded away completely."

He stopped short, and smiled up at Tsunade brilliantly.

"I think I'm in a new dimension. One where I wasn't the worst leader and father in history and actually made the plunge to save my son. I've read scrolls about it before. It's not as rare as you think. Something to do with synchronizing frequencies-H-hey, Tsunade nee-chan! Where are you going?"


	4. Chapter 4

They had moved him to a new cell. This one was more spacious, with even a window, and best of all, he was unchained.

Freedom! Only the slightest taste of it, but the feel of telling his muscles to move and actually being able to finish the action was euphoric. He spent his time working out-after all, he had nothing else to do after the interrogators stopped trying to prove that he was an Oto bastard, whatever that was. However, not even stressing his body to the point of complete physical exhaustion could distract him from the eternal strife that refused to remove itself from his heart.

Ecstasy: he was going to meet his son again! Uzumaki Naruto! How could he ever think that such a wonderfully descriptive name was ridiculous-it was beautiful! So right that the boy took his mother's name, as even though his and Minato's appearances were almost identical, Naruto was so much more Kushina than Minato.

Horror: Anko had told him what really happened on the night where the timelines diverged, told him how his other self had cursed his son to so many years of pain and humiliation… Doubtless, it was better than using his son's life to destroy the beast utterly, but still. When he revealed this fact to the boy, whatever strange and skewed relationship they had would be torn apart, and would most likely never be rekindled in any form again.

The thought of keeping it a secret crossed his mind exactly once. He immediately pinched out the idea with a great amount of shame. No matter how much he treasured the possibility of having a son that didn't hate him, he could never do that to Naruto. He'd basically murdered the boy in another timeline, after all. It was the least he could do to seek a relationship without any hideous secrets lurking around. There was probably a 1% possibility of Naruto wanting a father/son relationship even after the truth was aired out, and Minato clung to it desperately.

Now, if only this would work out…

-----

"Fifty one, fifty two, fifty three, fifty four…" Fifty four times he would say he was sorry…

"Hey, ojii-san! Whatcha doing those weird handstand pushups for, ah?"

He half turned his head to see an increasingly familiar mop of yellow hair. _This was it, this is the day…_ He pushed himself off the ground and landed back upright.

"It's called exercise, bratling-that's what people do when they want to grow stronger or, as in my case, recover muscle from being three months in constrained captivity." Damnit, there he went, acting as if he had any right to joke around with his son! "Naruto, there are a few really important things I need to talk to you about."

Naruto looked confused for a moment, then somber, and he took hand of one of the prison bars as if to get closer. "Is it about the-the Kyuubi?"

Minato smiled slightly, sadly. "A bit. A very little bit. Naruto, do you know the story of how it was defeated?" The boy nodded hesitantly. "Now, I want you to imagine what it would have been like if it happened in a very slightly different way-if the Yondaime had lived, but lost his son and the Sandaime while killing the demon for good?"

At Naruto's wide-eyed stare, he continued. "Because that's the world where I came from. I lost my son through my own, shitty mistake," He was losing his composure! Crap, stay calm, don't look away- "and made a hell of a lot more, but now, through some freakish unexplainable miracle, here he is alive and, and whole in front of me, and probably a hell of a lot better kid than I could ever raise." Here it comes…

Stunned silence for a moment that seemed to drag on forever, and then: "So, you're a bizzaro version of the Yondaime?"

"I suppose, yes." Any moment now…

"And-and the Yondaime in this place, the one that sealed-that defeated the Kyuubi, he was my real dad?"

"Yes..." Come on, just get it over with!

"And in your place-world-whatever, you had to let m-your son die for the Kyuubi to die?"

"The Sandaime was dead. The rest of the candidates for Hokage were vile, corrupt bastards. I meant to die, to keep you alive, but… Oh, gods, Naruto, please forgive me…"

"That's an actual choice I would have to make? The village or my son?…" The boy looked up, and Minato felt like crying. His son looked so empty and lost. "How can I make that kind of decision?" Suddenly, Naruto was holding onto the bars of the cell to keep him up, rather than to listen more closely.

"Naruto, I'm sorry! I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough! Kami knows I tried to find a solution that wouldn't get anyone killed, but some things are impossible!" He really was crying now, but damn it all if he was going to let his son leave like this!

"Impossible… I used to pretend that word didn't exist, but…" Naruto stepped back in dull horror. "I see… Heh, I am pretty stupid, for believing such stupid stuff, like becoming Hokage…"

This wasn't what Minato had wanted. Not at all. "Naruto, don't listen to me! I'm not half the man you're going to be-shit, don't you dare give up on your dreams because of an idiot like me! Naruto!"

"This had gone on far enough."

"Jiraiya…" But the clownish, brotherly man he had depended on for all those lonely years was gone, and in their place was a cold and emotionless sage. The large hand placed on Naruto's quaking shoulder clearly emphasized that the boy was his now, and Minato had no place in his life.

"Let's go. We've got a long trip ahead." Naruto stood up unsteadily, and slowly walked away with Jiraiya.

Minato considered beating the bars until his hands bruised black. He pondered screaming his son's name until his voice grew hoarse. He liked the idea of punching the walls until his knuckles broke the skin, but he didn't have the strength.

So the Fourth Hokage, the man whom an entire country was instructed to flee away from on sight, the hunter of demons and leader of the greatest country in the world, sat there and cried silently in the cold, lonely cell until he lost consciousness.

----

"Get up, Namikaze." He opened one crusty eye, and saw a tall mass of greens, blues and browns.

"Mnrgh."

"I told you to get UP." There was a sudden jarring sound that vibrated through the concrete he lay on as the prison doors were pulled back into the walls. The blurred figure walked in, grabbed him by the cheap material at his neck and drew him up to eye level, all in one smooth motion.

Brown eyes, purple diamond, blonde hair. "Tsunade." The name came out hoarsely, and he immediately regretted using the rusty drainpipe he called a throat.

"Minato, you need to pull yourself together and get a life. I may not have seen you in thirteen years, but I knew you for ten years before that. If I don't get you out of your slump now, you're going to bathe in self-pity in your cell for weeks. Am I wrong?"

She wasn't. He looked down, and the tall woman took the signal to plop him down on his bench. He took several long gulps from the jug of water kept in his cell-purified, and utterly tasteless-and wiped his mouth with his sleeve before looking back up at Tsunade.

"I was foolish to let you do that. Really, not one of my brighter moves," she began, pacing about the floor of the cell. "He doesn't hate you, you know. Not you, or the man you were in this dimension. Was that what you were worried about?"

He silently shook his head. "No? Then what on earth has you cowering in here like a frightened child? I _know_ how powerful you are, you could have gotten yourself out anytime you wanted."

"His dream," he whispered. "I crushed his dream. He would have made a great Hokage."

Tsunade scoffed. "Looks like you don't know your son _or_ your job very well. Simply adding a new perspective won't depress him for long - from what I hear, Naruto has been wanting this position since he could speak. Furthermore, you've introduced a scenario which he might have had to face when he was already in the robes and hat, and it's far better for him to have his breakdown right now rather then in the future."

"That doesn't mean I can't feel horrible about it, though," he said wretchedly. "I still won't forgive myself for making him look that way."

"You may not be forgiven," said the Godaime, "but redemption is another matter." He looked up, startled. Tsunade bent at the waist to meet him eye to steely brown eye. "Tell me, sir dimensional tourist, do they have an organization called 'Akatsuki' where you come from?"

-----

Five months after the man rumored to be the Fourth Hokage was dragged through the gates of Konoha, he escaped, leaving only as evidence of his incarceration the bemused look on Tsunade's face as she answered the council's outraged cries, a heap of ash where Jounin Hatake Kakashi used to keep his collection of erotica, and a note saying that it wasn't proper for genin instructors to read porn, no matter how funny it was to read the stuff in front of one's students. The resulting cry of horror and anguish was said to have been heard all throughout the city.

----------

Explanation, because I screwed up a little as far as revealing emotions from other people: This is the first time that Jiraiya has seen Minato, and it's as a middleaged, atrophied man he hardly recognizes from the handsome hero that he saw die, weeping at the feet of his current student who is currently experiencing a Heroic BSOD. That's why he comes across as an ass. I truly apologize for failing to make that at all clear in the writing.


	5. Chapter 5

'He must be mad. He _must_ be.'

Hizashi strode down the hall, a rare look of agitation on his normally serene face. Accountants and chuunins were quick to get out of his way, and one unfortunate secretary actually squeaked and dove for cover.

'He's never been this stupid before, why start now? Is he that depressed that his favorite student is worm food?'

He slammed open a door. "Jiraiya! What is the meaning of this?"

The older man looked up in surprise. "Hizashi?"

"Explain," Hizashi snarled. "_NOW_." He thrust out a scroll. Jiraiya glanced at it, and something closed off in his lined face. "Tell me why we are still wasting valuable men on searching for Minato."

"We must never give up hope-" Jiraiya began.

"Don't give me that bull shit! If we aren't careful with our men's lives, we _will_ lose this war, no matter how many 'last minute heroes' you hire out!"

The memories from that battle still creeped up on him in his nightmares. Minato had gone missing, a hideous figure all wreathed in boiling blue chakra was taking out shinobi by the dozens, and then… All was fire, water, and fear so thick it seemed like an element of its own, and he could have sworn he saw the bodies of the dead rise to fight…

"No more wasted lives."

"What on earth are you talking about?" The red-streaked face remained impassive, unreadable, but Hizashi imagined he could see the turmoil behind the small black eyes.

"I know all about your 'heroes,' Jiraiya," said Hizashi, a nasty smile working its way on his face. "I know that if you hadn't paid them with embezzled money, they wouldn't have lifted a finger to aid us at the Valley of the End. See, mercenaries like Akatsuki don't work for free."

The room was silent for a long moment, and then Jiraiya seemed to collapse in his seat. "I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to do this."

What?

"Neji is such a nice kid. Really a pity."

"No," Hizashi whispered. "No. That's, that's too far-"

"You brought this on yourself, Hizashi," and then there were two more presences in the room, their black cloaks rustling slightly as they took their places at Hizashi's side.

"I hope that you'll be pleased to know that we're discontinuing our search for Minato. No need, for one that might be dead, when a new one volunteers to take up the mantle… Lord Hokage." Hizashi was frozen. Jiraiya walked around him and out the door.

He paused at the threshold. "Do keep in mind, my Lord; we are at war. Please do not waste our time by looking for your son. He will be quite safe; won't he, Itachi?"

The cloaked figure on the left smiled, a red glint in his eyes, and the traitor walked out the door, and Hizashi sagged to the floor; in brighter news and on the other side of the multiverse, Minato began his search for his son.


	6. Chapter 6

Amidst the stones, bushes, spiky grass, variety of thorns, malodorous medleys of crap, urine and sweat, and ear piercing chorus of insects, it was a question that woke him up.

"You could be my dad." A pause, and then: "If you still want to."

Minato gaped.

"Never had a real dad before," said Naruto contemplatively. "Should be interesting. I mean, there was the old man, and I still got Iruka-sensei, and Teuchi-san, and that old pervert over there. Never had a dad."

Minato looked over to where a plume of meaty-scented smoke wafted, and there was the sullen figure of Jiraiya, crouched over a campfire roasting some sort of small creature. It smelled like rabbit.

"You ever had a son before? 'Sides your version of me?" Naruto asked. Minato stayed silent, and looked up at the gradually departing stars.

"I suppose the closest thing I've ever had for a family was my genin team," he said eventually. "But then Obito died, and Rin, and then Kakashi went nuke-nin–"

"Hold up a sec," interrupted Naruto. "You had Kakashi-sensei on your team? And he ran away?"

"Oh yeah," said Minato thoughtfully. "I forgot he was your sensei."

"What happened to him?" Ah, this was familiar. He could almost imagine that the loudmouth on the ground next to him was a prepubescent Uchiha rather than a demon weilding alternate version of his son.

"Kakashi has led a difficult life, Naruto, and there are some things that he'll need to talk to you himself about, but I will tell you why I think he did what he did..." It felt like Obito was alive again that night, like it was twenty years in the past and he was still explaining to his student why his teammate wasn't cooperating. Only this time, the disgruntled teammate was a mass murderer who had killed an entire clan of super geniuses because their plans to overthrow Konoha were a filthy insult to the memory of his best friend.

"I don't think he killed all of them," Naruto announced.

"Oh? And how do you figure that?"

"'Cause you only knew Kakashi-sensei while he was still a stupid, cool avenger brat, but I met him when he'd already gotten over this Obito guy's death. Kakashi-sensei wouldn't have killed 'em all, he couldn't." The boy stretched out on the ground, positive in his conviction.

It was stupid, it was petty, and it was that same sort of thing that had driven the two of them apart in that dark cell, but he couldn't help it. "Naruto, I'm sorry, but there were no survivors–"

"Because you couldn't find them." Naruto smiled. "You're too negative, dad."

He let the argument fall at that. It wasn't the sort of thing that could continue after that pronouncement. "Yeah, well, you're too positive. Brat."

"Old man." And suddenly, everything was wonderful. His son had acknowledged him, had sought out his company, and the sun was rising over the fields.

There came a grunt as Jiraiya plucked the rabbit-looking thing off the campfire to inspect it for uncooked flesh, and the mood fell again.

Right. Him.

Minato blew a lock of hair off his face in frustration. "Naruto, why are you two here?" he sighed.

"Huh?"

"Not that I don't enjoy your company, but I thought I was tracking _you_ down, not the reverse."

Naruto scratched his cheek. "Oh," he said. "An Akatsuki operative had been tracking you for the past week, and ero-sennin wants to take him down while he's distracted."

"I take it you mean Aloe Vera yonder?" He gestured with his thumb back towards a cluster of innocuous bushes. Naruto smile and nodded.

"Yup."

Minato sat up, fingering something metallic in his pocket. "I suppose I should take care of that, shouldn't I..." The kunai flew out behind him, landing a scant few centimeters from the much alarmed submerged man. The plant uprooted himself, scattering dirt in his ungraceful scramble to the surface. By the time Minato had flashed to the kunai, he was already out of the earth and leaping upwards. The paler sliver of face that he could see was split in a triumphant, pointy-toothed grin, and it didn't have time to fall before an enormous boulder knocked him out of the sky. Where the plant man landed, he coughed up a viscous, evil smelling liquid, then sank back into the ground.

All was still, though the air almost shimmered with the tension that ran through it; an awful muffled crunch shuddere dthe trees, and then the tension died. Minato emerged filthy and grinning, the form tossed over his shoulder terribly limp, and the hole in the ground filled up behind him. He tossed the body carelessly and dusted his hands.

"Thanks for the help, Jiraiya. That could have turned out nasty."

The older man strolled over the clearing, and looked at the body appreciatively. "A neat job. Where did you learn the Earth Burrowing technique?"

"Kumo is a big country, and suffers Iwa-nin with even less grace than we do. As a conquered country, they asked for our protection, and we provided." Minato smiled, and turned his face to the leaf filtered sun. "A few years afterwards, they tried to switch sides back to Kumo, and were obliterated. Poor bastards."

A groan came from the body of the Akatsuki, and Minato kicked him thoughtfully. "Looks like he's coming to." Another kick rolled the plant onto his back, and the pale white hemisphere was skewed in pain.

Without breaking his stare at the plant man, Minato called out. "Naruto, please come here. I'd like to show you something." He turned to Jiraiya. "It is alright if I teach him about prisoners, right?"

The old man shrugged. "He's going to learn sooner or later. I'll leave you two to it." He stalked out, presumably to finish off the rabbit thing he'd started.

Naruto stepped cautiously into the clearing. "What's going on?"

"Over here. Sit with me." The two blondes crouched down next to the slowly awakening man. "Now, tell me what you know about the treatment for a captured spy."

"Um, they should be taken to an interrogator?"

"That's true for when we're in the city, but what about in the battle field?"

"Well, I'd guess that you'd have to be the interrogator instead."

"Entirely correct! I want you to observe closely." Minato knelt down and addressed their prisoner. "What is your name?"

The yellow eye blinked uncomprehendingly.

"Look, this has been a trying morning for the both of us, so it would be very nice if you could give me your name and we can get this over with."

"Zetsu," ground out the coarse voice. "My, my trunk has been, the heart of the wood, I don't think," and a few painful coughs cut him off.

Minato waited patiently until the hacking stopped, and then, "Zetsu. I am sorry that your heartwood has been severed. If I had the time, I would have certainly incapacitated you to a degree that wouldn't have you dieing within twenty four hours, but, well, I don't have that time, and right now, neither do you. Now, if you want to live to the last of your undoubtedly painful twenty four hours, I suggest you cooperate to your fullest extant."

Zetsu continued to resist questioning for the next few hours, but he began to talk quite desperately when Minato began to tear off the black mask that covered the left side of his face. Naruto watched it all

He had tried to feel sorry for the spy at first, but the starving scholer in him eventually emerged, curious and asking questions about the process. Towards the end, when the victim remained silent for an inquiry after the identity of his leader, Naruto reached out and broke off one of the spines that formed the outer shell.

"Pain! Pain! He calls himself Pain! Don't kill Zetsu, don't kill him, he's my brother, he can't, he can't, I did what you said, I did, I did!" The man stammered on for another minute, then fell limp. The spikes that formed his shell drooped slightly, and his skin took on a waxy texture. The Akatsuki was dead. The whole process took about six hours.

Minato leaned back with a satisfied sigh. "I don't know about you guys, but I am absolutely famished."

"Yeah..." Naruto sat still for a bit, still digesting what he had just witnessed. Then he looked up at Minato and smiled brilliantly. "Let's go get some ramen!"

----------

You've heard it all before from a hundred different authors: sorry for taking so long. Looking for beta who will help me cut down the purple prose and get from point a to point b, and won't take any crap about procrastination. Thank you, terrorofthehighway, for getting me off my butt and uploading what's been rotting under piles of papers for the past three weeks. Next chapter will most likely mention a woman with red hair.


	7. Chapter 7

Beware of timeskips. You all know how it works.

0000

And so the three traveled across the land, both older men doing their best to help the younger grow and learn. Of course, their journey was not without trial.

0000

"Why don't you believe me, damn you!"

"You are not the man I taught! I can see the man you used to be, but you're not him. You've changed, Minato, far more than you think you have."

"Then accept me as a comrade, if not your formal student?"

"That... might just be possible. However, first you have to fight me."

"What?"

"Now. You don't use Hiraishin, I don't use toads."

"Crazy old man..." And then, a blurred stream of gold rushed through the air, and only the clanging jar that ran down Jiraiya's arm told him that the kunai he had drawn had saved his life. He turned to where Minato had gone, to see the young man skidding to a halt two hundred yards away. "I don't need Hiraishin to be fast."

Jiraiya responded by throwing the kunai he had defended himself with high into the air. As it began to tumble ground-wards, he made a seal with his hands, and suddenly the air was thick with the small metal knives, all hurtling directly at Minato.

Minato swore lightly under his breath, and thrust his hands in front of him. Jiraiya could only see a faint blur in Minato's hands, like the air disruption over a hot surface in the sun, but the moment the Shadow Kunai entered a five foot radius of the outstretched hands, they violently exploded out of existence. Minato dropped the mysterious technique in time to catch the one true kunai in his hands, and he grinned.

"New rule! Only one knife between us!"

Jiraiya dropped to the ground and thrust his hands into the dirt. Minato stared at him for one moment before leaping high into the air, narrowly avoiding the sharp, crumbling spikes of earth thrusting up where he had just been standing. He landed closer to Jiraiya than he would have liked, who grinned and said, "More than one way to get a sharp edge!" And suddenly Minato faced a barrage of translucent spinning blades of wind.

"Using my own techniques against me, Jiraiya?" He took a deep breath and exhaled sharply, the cloud of wind nature chakra canceling out the wind shurikens and turning them to mere breezes.

From the shade of a nearby tree, Naruto watched the fight with an interested eye, occasionally feeding small candies to a toad.

0000

Time passed, as it is wont to do.

One day, Tsunade received a scroll on her desk. Unsealed, it offered three heads spilling onto the scattered paperwork: one with piercings and bright orange hair, one female and delicately featured, and one with eyes that weren't supposed to exist anymore.

A few months later had a bright orange mask on the Hokage's desk, labeled with "Tricky Uchiha bastard stole my Hiraishin, but I stole his mask. We'll get him next time."

The next week came with a bloody mass of wild black hair and gore, the unmistakable eyes of the Sharingan, and a note saying, "Got 'im."

The Akatsuki was disbanded.

0000

They really shouldn't have messed around with that statue. It was Jiraiya who had wanted to see what the purpose of it was. Since they'd killed Madara before he could reveal his evil plans, the mystery remained unsolved, and Jiraiya had always been an intensely curious man.

As it turned out, the seals holding the beasts in place were too starved of maintenance to hold up when the dirty old man started poking at them, and now they were all screwed.

"Naruto!" It was too late, the world was darkening into black and red, and all he could see of his son was his bright blue eyes, until those too faded into dark, blood red...

There was a problem, though. The eyes weren't gone. All the rest of the beast chamber had disappeared, replaced by what looked like cavelike rock, but his son's face was still there staring at him. It had changed somehow...

"Naruto?" The blood red eyes blinked, and the boy loped away in a curiously animal fashion. Was that his son? It looked like his son. He looked down. Apparently, he was on a bed. Hadn't he been running? He lifted a hand, and found it to be restrained. Oh dear, not this again. "Tsunade, haven't we gone over this before? I know I ran away, but there's no need for you to be petty..."

"Whho you ttalking to?" The little animal boy was back, and Minato knew he had been mistaken in thinking the boy his son. The young voice was rasping and ugly, and the shape of the eyes was all wrong, not to mention the color. But then another figure walked into the murky gloom, his silvery white hair red in the dim light, and placed a large, heavily callused hand on the strange boy's shoulder. The possessive action tugged at his memory- "Jiraiya!"

"So you've come back to life, have you? Welcome home." And Minato noticed with a rising amount of horror that this was not the man he'd spent the last few months winning the trust of, but the man he'd trusted his life with, and yet here was a boy he didn't know except for in that other dimension...

"You... You lied to me?" The traitor had the effrontery to look confused. Minato clenched his fists, and felt steel under paper. Aha.

"What? Naruto, where the hell did you send him?" This question was directed at the youth in Jiraiya's grasp, who hissed and tried to wriggle out.

"Nnot thhiss onne's fault! Yyyou jusst ssaidd to pput himm ooout of thhe wway wwhere nno one will ffindd, aand wwho would ffind himm in onne offf the bbetweeenn pplaccess?" Jiraiya snarled, and shoved the boy away scuttling and hissing to himself.

"It would seem, Minato, that your usefulness has outlived itself-" The three pronged kunai suddenly flashed out, cutting Minato's bonds and pinning the animal boy's sleeve to the wall in one motion. Minato body-flickered to the frantically struggling boy, snapped the kunai out, and closed his eyes momentarily to 'sight' his nearest seal marker. A vague map of the Shinobi continent appeared in his mind's eye, formed by countless markers that he had spread over the land.

If he was _here, _then the nearest marker was _there_, a few miles South East... He opened his eyes again, the process having taken less than a second, and spared an instant to glare at his former teacher before body-flickering himself and the boy to the destined mark.

0000

"You're Naruto, aren't you," said Minato. The two of them were resting under a tree, buried within whose roots was an old, rusting three pronged kunai whose teleport seal was barely visible through the rot of forgotten years.

The boy nodded cautiously.

"You were supposed to be my son. I thought I'd killed you Do you know what really happened that night?" The stupid creature nodded again, but seemed disinclined to say more. Minato sighed to himself, then patted the ground beside him. "Come here. I need you to be intelligent." The boy-thing blinked, then scooched over. "Now, I'm going to look at your seal, okay?"

He put his hands on the boy's shoulders - tense, and shaking - and sought out the patterns below the skin. There was the smooth chakra, clean and cool, but it was only a thin stream in the thick rivers of gritty, oily youkai.

That wasn't right - there was too much demonic influence. Where is it coming from - ah! A well of foreign chakra that felt of old, strong chakra like steel - that would be the Sandaime's seal - and here is where the well has partially broken open, that has traces of ice and fire - that would be Danzou? What was he doing in here? - and another imprint of coarse stone to keep that broken part open and unhealing. Jiraiya's work.

Minato sent his own chakra in, gently riding the twisted stream of human and demon down to the center, and began picking at Jiraia's seal. Gently, gently, and that sent the last of Jiraya's touch swirling away to be filtered out. Now to repair the Sandaime's seal...

Thank goodness that only fixing the seal required no sacrifice on his soul. With his own chakra, he filled in the holes and removed the twisted influence of Danzou's, and gave a command to the seal to purge the boy's body and start its filtering anew. For what seemed like the first time in hours, Minato took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

0000

It was night, the stars twinkling above the leaves of the tree, and the boy sat unconscious in the same position as when they'd started. Little flickers of bright red flew across the sleeping boy's skin, the byproduct of the seal purging the chakra paths, and while the surrounding grass seemed suspiciously dry and brown, there seemed to be no ill effects.

An hour or so passed, and by the time the last few trickles of youkai found its way into the ground, and the boy opened crystal blue eyes for the first time in his life, the sun's approach was being heralded with pale grey skies.

The boy sat under the tree in silence, finally blue eyes staring into some unseen dilemma hidden in the grass, and who knew what sorts of thoughts ran through the mind of the newly human boy.

Minato took this time to drink in the appearance of this boy who was wholly his; not some alternate version from another world, but completely and totally belonging to him.

There were differences, of course: this new boy's body was much leaner, cheeks that should have held the last vestiges of baby fat now gaunt and lined. The hair was basically the same, an insane mop of dandelion yellow, but the eyes... They had been influenced the most under his constant partial possession, and though the narrowness of pupil and crimson shade were gone, they did not belong to the woman he had loved. For all their vibrant color, they put Minato more in mind of a small forest predator than a woman who had loved to smile.

"I," said the boy presently. He giggled, and said "Me. I... belong to me." The boy looked up at Minato. "You. You're the man I sent and called back. I am," a puzzled look came over his face, "sorry?"

"Forgiven," said Minato in a choked voice, "completely forgiven. You're my son." And in that moment, he could see a glimpse of the woman he loved in that joyful grin.

0000

Urg. I like playing around with symbolically represented chakra too much. You'll find a similar scene to the 'cleansing' in my Pain's Horcrux story. Just meaningless description that has no basis in reality whatsoever. But it's fun to write. Was this fight scene as similar to the fight against Zetsu as I fear it might be? I'm sorry if it is. I just found these pages floating around, abandoned and unloved, so I might have been inspired by one to write the other.

So, I was beating myself up over this twist. "Why have Minato visit Canon!Naruto at all? Why not just have AU!Naruto revealed and have the main storyline down at first go?" Then I thought to myself, "If pre-trip Minato met AU!Naruto, the reaction would not be pretty. Minato would lose control and kill everything within a five mile radius. He needed to meet Canon!Naruto to realize how far he'd gone down the hole and calm the fuck down. In the way I have it now, Minato can approach the problem of Jiraiya as a stable person, and have WAFF with BOTH Narutos."

The next chapter might be an omake. It might be about AU!Naruto growing up. It might also have Kakashi. Yay, Kakashi!

Okay, since this chapter made very little sense, and I have no idea when I'll update this thing again, I'm gonna spoil exactly what's going on right now. Not the entire story, just what happened here.

Basically, Minato, Jiraiya, and Naruto work together to defeat Akatsuki. While poking around at the giant statue containing seven beings of pure demonic chakra, the time/space jutsu (which no one knows about yet and will be explained whenever I get around to having AU!Naruto give away everything that's been going on) that sent Minato into the Canonverse was interrupted, and Minato went back to the world he came from, complete with a partially possessed Naruto and corrupted Jiraiya.  
I don't blame you for being confused. Minato has very little idea of what is going on, either.  
Sorry about the bizarre, jumping-to-conclusions style of writing. It's an experiment, so that when I get into serious story writing, I'll be able to cut the crap with the vague hints of plot, and make something actually understandable.


	8. The End

Alright, time to lay it straight.

I don't read Naruto anymore. I'm not going to finish this story. And after thinking dark self-deprecating thoughts to myself after a long day of uncomfortably burping at the airport (damn that bison steak), I've decided that I'm going to lay down what I wasn't capable of communicating to you all.

We're calling the timeline where Minato lives Line A and the one that starts canon and branches off when Minato enters it Line B. Got it? Cool.

A!Naruto was kidnapped by Danzou at the time of his birth and kept hidden, because he wanted to keep the jinchuuriki as a secret weapon. Kakashi found out about the Uchiha coup which had fastforwarded because of Danzou's new plans about three years after that, and killed the majority. Jiraiya helped him relocate the civilians and several women to a town outside the city, and he kept Sasuke and Itachi as his students. When Danzou's coup was discovered and destroyed, Jiraiya took over Naruto, but instead of informing Minato of what he found, he took over Danzou's plans and handed Naruto and the boy who in Line B is known as Sai over to Kakashi to be trained with Sasuke and Itachi.

A few years later, when the younger children were about eight, the small group dismantled Akatsuki, killing everyone. Sasuke and Naruto took down Kakuzu, Kakashi took Pein and Konan, and Itachi took Orochimaru and Zetsu. An interesting byproduct of the battle brought Anko to their ranks, along with the children who would have formed Line B's Sound Five.

The group acted as Jiraiya's personal mercenary force for several years, keeping very secret and very low-key. Naruto's seal had so been tampered with that he was more open to the different wavelengths of the different universes, and when Jiraiya realized this he trained the half-wild child in space/time techniques. Sasuke hated this because it made Naruto even more inhuman, when they'd grown up together as brothers. Sasuke had always acted as Naruto's keeper, and when Jiraiya started training him, it divided the two.

This was all leading up to the battle with Cloud, which took place at the same time as Line B's battle at the Valley of the End. A!Naruto used the techniques Jiraiya taught him to phase Minato out of this world and into the next, and then proceeded to attack the Cloud army alongside Sasuke.

There was a line in the fic uttered by Hizashi, something about "the dead standing up and fighting." That was back when I thought that fan-made list of tailed beasts was legitimate. Under the fan-made list of beasts, the two-tailed cat had the ability to raise the dead. Since Cloud had the two-tailed cat, I thought it would be cool to have Naruto fighting against the other jinchuuriki and only reference the fight by the powers being used, but that doesn't work so well when those powers are only fanon.

Jiraiya pretended that Naruto and Sasuke were mysterious heroes come to help lead Konoha in the war against Cloud, and I'm still not really sure what was going through his head. That's the biggest reason why I quit writing, because I couldn't justify making one of my favorite characters a villain. It was a cool concept, but I couldn't find the reasoning to back it up. SO. At this point, Jiraiya is pretty much leading Konoha by the nose. He is in control of the troops, so long as he makes a show of searching for Minato, and he is in control of the public because all eyes are on Naruto and Sasuke and he holds their strings. When Hizashi confronts him about all this, he decides to 'abandon' Minato and install Hizashi as a puppet Hokage, using Neji as leverage. In all honesty, however, the group treats Neji quite well, and the boys learn quite a bit from each other.

About a year later, they help Neji 'escape', thus letting Hizashi retire himself and holding Jiraiya's secret. Jiraiya decides it's time to take Minato out of stasis, and asks Naruto to bring him back. He does so, but what Jiraiya was counting on was a confused, weak man who doesn't know what's going on. What he gets is a razor sharp man who's been spending the past year learning to be a father and all that entails, including becoming fiercely protective.

Blah blah blah, Minato fixes Naruto's seal with some highly indulgent synasthesia prose, and that's where we got stuck. The next chapter was supposed to be Naruto describing his childhood which I've just outlined above. There's this cute little nonsensical comic I did a few years back of what I wanted to write here, but the words never came to me. I've got one and a half pages colored in Flash... I should probably finish those. Not in color, though, that takes too long.

Anyway, after they share EXPOSITION, the daddy son team goes and tracks down Sasuke because he is Naruto's BESTEST BRO(there's another little comic I made of this scene where Sasuke threatens Minato into letting him join the family because Sauce Gay was a greater part of Naruto's life than Minato ever was and because being one big happy family would make Naruto so happy), and then together they seek out the leader of the third power in the war next to Konoha and Cloud, which is Rain. The three of them seek an appointment with the leader, and are heavily surprised when it turns out to be DA-DA-DA-DAAAAA, one Miss Uzumaki Kushina! WOO, GO TOMATO HEAD! She slaps Minato around a bit, dotes on Naruto, and then squeezes the entire group plus Sasuke into one big family hug.

One ending for this ends with the Uzumaki family plus Sasuke forgetting about the war and just living where no one will ever find them, content with the company of themselves and whatever members of the new Akatsuki manage to wander in. But that's kind of depressing, so let's pretend that they destroy Jiraiya's web of lies, ally Rain with Konoha, beat out a ratified peace treaty with Cloud, and live happily ever after.

Does that satisfy your curiosity?


End file.
